Believe in God.

           Generally, there are 3 kinds of living thing in the world such human, animal and plant. Have you ever thought who create those kinds of things? Or how can I could be here? It is very normal to have this question as a human. This phenomenon is also called by existentialism or existential intelligence. We will always want to know about the creator of this world, do we need it? Find it? Believe it? My answer is we need.

            I have and believe God. In some previous meeting, I studied about some kind of religion or maybe just kind of aliran with Ms. Saras Dewi. Like I said in my previous essay, I agreed that every single human is supposed to need God to be trusted, to be believed. I have a religion which is Islam, I am moslem as well, and I try to believe in the name of Allah. However, I do not try to discriminate any other religion that believes different kind of God with me.

            I have my own way to believe God. Honestly, perhaps I never completely fill my responsibility to do praying 5 times a day, but I still do it to till this time. This is just example how I show my belief to God, but there are still other ways to show my belief toward God. I still consider while deciding something to tell or ask God even not by praying. By facing any problem, I never become hesitated to consult it to God as well. I do a lot of activities like studying, teaching, making friends are a part of my belief in God. While tolerating other religion or culture or any differences surrounding me, it also shows that I believe because it is part of planning to make differences, and I prefer to tolerate differences. So, it is not always about praying, reading Al-qur’an or holy bible or just going to mosque, church, or other religion place, the ways to believe God is beyond those things.

            Imagination can’t be totally described in words. Again, I have my own imagination of the thing or someone or whatever called God. I do not really have exactly types of God that I believe. I may said that it is kind of abstract, because I can’t describe it in words, it’s not woman or man or other things, I can’t see it, I can’t feel it, I just believe it (the power of belief). Furthermore, I can’t also capture God’s presence. To honest, I also can’t answer 2 last questions. Basically, I try to believe God which can be fundamental to decide it’s good or wrong, has the rational rules and has no discrimination toward others. That’s all I have.

Effective Language Learning? It's using technology! :)

We are as the new generation of educators has to master technology in language learning.  In this week, I felt so grateful to study TLL (Technology and Language Learning). Moreover, I realized that in this globalization era, educator candidates like us have to be very creative in teaching. One of the ways to do it is involving technology in language learning.

In language learning, there are 4 language focuses such as listening, speaking, reading, and writing. All of those things can’t be separated.  In this meeting, I was so surprised and amazed that there are a lot of supporting websites and blogs which supports language learning and I explored especially for listening and speaking. Let’s flashback to my senior high school, I just listened to the monologue throughout 3 years, what a boring learning it was.  Furthermore, my teacher just asked us to speak some dialogues to assess speaking skills.

I found some interesting website that supports listening and speaking skill. I was thinking that it must be impossible to teach or asses speaking skill in websites or online, but it truly looks possible after finding those websites. Some of the reasons are because we have microphone (external or internal) and also websites that provides online learning. On the other hand, there is a lot of website that provides fabulous listening learning indeed! Moreover, some websites also provide other language learning! Super cool! I am sure that you waste your time if you do not try all of those websites to learn English and other languages.

I am going to create a blog which provides information or language learning process in group. My friends and I decided to use blogspot.com because it is easier for us to modify the content instead of wix or wordpress.com. Our theme is England or United Kingdom. Hopefully, we can do it well! You will as well :).

Good Assumption = Good Perception

God creates a lot of things. The examples of those things are living creatures such as human, animal and plant. In this case, human as one of living things who gets privilege to have complex brains rather than other living creatures. Those brains support us to think about something. In those thinking processes, we do some activities. We start looking or hearing about an issue, then think about it, after that we use our prior knowledge to create any assumptions, and finally we make some perceptions or point of views of it.

Studying in SSE contributed a lot of things to my life. One of those things is point of view changes. I was born here in Jakarta. I had finished my school experiences till senior high school. Now I am also studying to be an educator here, in Jakarta which is capital city of Indonesia. Perhaps, I ever met some students from other region in my elementary, junior or senior high school. On my previous life, I prejudged my school friends (especially in senior high school) from other region of Indonesia. I always think that they are old fashioned etc. Ironically, I also did stereotyping. However with being jakartanese makes me feel that I am better than them, they are bad etc. It still happened till my first month in SSE.

SSE Students are truly colorful. All of them have strong characters. At that time, I did stereotyping for some students like Medan student, Javanese students or Sundanese students. I thought that they have strange accent, that’s why their unique accent influence their English pronunciation (so that I thought their English is quite bad). My perspectives were changed step by step on my second month, when I asked some friends from Sundanese, what did they expect for living here? How about the people? They answered that at first time, it was hard to live here, and they assumed that people here are not welcomed. However finally they found that it was not true at all. Many Jakarta students are helpful and kind, they also could survive to live here.

Overall, from my personal experiences above, I concluded that every single human tends to do those kinds of things in their life (prejudice or stereotyping). Nobody is perfect. We may make a mistake, but let’s forget that mistake and take the life learning. For instance, when we see handphone, we can see from different angle, such as face, behind, left or right side. The most important thing is no matter our assumption about something, first try to know it deeply, and do not judge without observation or consideration (also facts).

HYPER MALL in Technology and Language Learning :)

            Voila! Welcome back to me. This is my third reflective journal. I have studied splendid and sophisticated material this week. This is a MALL.

            What’s on your mind while hearing this word? Taman Anggrek? Central Park? MOI? Or Pejaten Village? But wait guys mall here is not that kind of things that I mentioned above. MALL here is a shortened of Mobile Assisted Language Learning. Wow wow sounds coll right? Let move on to deep knowing about it.

            Alright, we are going to explore what’s inside this MALL, will Matahari or J-CO be there? (Please ignore it). MALL as Mobile Assisted Language Learning is used to support or encourage language learning (also language acquisition). Based on this explanation, mobile learning also means, “With only slight differences in emphasis, the “M-Learning”, “e-Education”, “distance education”, “open learning”, “virtual learning”, and “multimedia learning” have all been as synonyms (Nycz & Cohen, 2007 in Mobile Learning: Pilot Projects and Initiatives, Guy Retta, 2010).

            After reading that statement, I assume that mobile learning is learning activity that involve technology which provide distant learning, multimedia learning and don’t  use face to face method anymore. Another question comes to my mind, is it possible that our learning will be successful by using this? And how can? Well I will share the mobile learning tools right away.

            There are a lot of mobile learning sophisticated tools in this whole world buddy! But I will explain what I got about this. Okay the first one is PDA! What’s PDAs? PDAs is shortened of Personal Assistant’s Digital. Are you still confused? Well PDAs is kinds of smartphone (at that time). In language learning process, it’s used to be translator and others function (video, music etc). It also provides Internet Connection also Wi-Fi system, that can help us to access the materials or do conversation anytime anywhere we go. But I think the memory is not big to store all of our data and also the monitor is too small, makes me dizzy at all L.

            The second one is Mobile phone. I think in this globalization era everyone has mobile phone and maybe more than one Hahaha. I assume this is the most economic mobile learning tools. Some function that we can use from this tool is we can do mobile conversation like e-buddy, YM, video call etc. Also we can register to one mobile English club that will send each material every day.

            I-Phone and I-Pod will be the last. By comparing 2 previous tools, I state that these are the most sophisticated tool than others. Because both of this have really amazing program. The program is more complete than others. We also can browse to the some learning website on i-Tunes to download some materials. It looks so more sophisticated only by looking at the apple symbol on the behind.

            Overall, this is not impossible, remember not impossible to do mobile learning guys. We are as digital natives have to be familiar to this kind of things. Hopefully, it will be useful for you. Cheers! :D

           

Gonna explore Gona

One dawn on 8th January 1992 at around 04.00 am, there was a nebulous baby crying voice. The voice came from the maternity home. Go inside the home, the midwife said the baby girl was born. And finally, parents gave that girl named, Eka Gona Putri. Behind the names begins.

Alright, the name that appears in paragraph above is my name. Eka and Putri are common names. But how about Gona, it sounds uncommon right? Let me clear this matter out. First thing that you have to remember is Gona doesn’t mean that it relates to Gonna in English, or my parents expect me to become an expert in English -______-“. Story behind that name happened when my dad dreamt something weird. The detail is like this (jeng jeng:mendramatisir).

My dad who named Zaelani Widarta had a business which runs in oxygen distribution (oxygen for hospital and machine shop only).  Every oxygen tubes have to be painted by the number of this production. But one of the tubes, show the different numbers. It was really shocking him, that’s why he got closer to that tube, to see more clearly (maybe also because his eyes are minus -.-a). After then, he saw a sentence that was my name, Eka Gona Putri.

Eka means one or the first, and then Putri means girl or woman. Those words really matches with my condition at that time which I am the oldest or the first child (daughter) in my family. What about Gona? My parents still don’t know this meaning because they get it from dad’s dream. But they assumed (you may call it as their "alibi" haha) that this is compounding of their nick name which are Gozel and Naf (Zaelani and Nafsiah). Whatever the way they get those words to be my name, I am truly grateful of it and never thought to change my names :).

Time to time they said I have to be independent and good role model for my little brother. They aren't be as strict as when they taught my brother (It's not fair :( ). The more I was getting older, the more I became more mature. I represent my personalities and characters as a Sun Flower. Sun flower is considered as the tallest flower (Fyi it's not Rafflesia Arnoldi). It can’t grow up in the ordinary place. It looks very eye-catchy (color: yellow), also tough (because of the structure which has a strong stem and tall) and it always follows the sun all the time. 

Here I reflect to my recent life, I try to see anything from different perspectives. Because even the worst thing, it must be have a good thing inside. That’s why I love being around many people and getting good influences from them. Also I am as a woman, has to be independent girl, tough outside, cheerful, beautiful and warm-hearted inside like a sun flower. I state that I live for living other people’s life :D.

no ANALOG now DIGITAL :D

Voila! Welcome back to the TLL reflective journal! Let me share what I have got in these third and fourth sessions. Check this out.

In this third session which is done at September 29th 2011, Pak Teguh make it as the “debate session”. Class is divided into 2 groups. 1 group which support to the Language Lab development and another group support the Internet Connection development. And I belong to the first group. In this hot debate session, I hear some different perspective both those things. And it was really surprising me at all. Both of them have advantages and disadvantages as well, but I tend to support Language Lab development rather than the Internet Connection development, because I think language lab is more useful than internet connection. Another opinion is the Internet connection is quite difficult to be controlled by us as a teacher. In this globalization era, it seems that our students are very creative and tricky about this.

After debating, pak Teguh give us kinda assignment. This is group discussion and presentation. Each group has to discuss social website or social networking and find the relation to language learning process. They are facebook, twitter, google, skype and etc. My group (Kris, Martan, Natasha, Rindy and I) are going to present the use of skype in language learning on the next 4th session.

The fourth session comes, let’s rock this out! Martan, Kris, and I had presented out discussion about Skype use for language learning and we did very well. Hopefully, all of my friends understand it well like we understand all of their presentations. 

Next lesson that I got is about digital immigrant and digital native. Pak teguh said we belong to digital native, wow it sounds cool, right? Haha. Back to my personal experience, when I was in senior high school, I seldom used technologies, maybe because of that’s of part of my need. But when I worked and studied here in SSE, technology uses have been increasing rapidly. It seems that I can’t do a lot without technology. It became my urgent need right now.

When Human learns Humanity.

What’s on my mind when I heard words: HUMANISTIC STUDIES? Honestly, I couldn’t guess what it’s going to be. I ask friends from 2009 cohort, and finally I get some clear explanations then. The story of Humanistic studies begins.

This is my first time to be taught by Pak Hatim Gazali, I don’t why I am a bit nervous. But time to time, it changes my feeling, it reduces my anxiety. At the same time, it was really surprising me that we are going to study, explore “something” which is some people think that it’s kind of sensitive thing (really curious).

In the paragraph above, I mention “something”, is it unclear right? In this subject, we are going to share, explore, respect, and debate about the differences around us. Not only the differences about culture, but also ethnic and religion. I think it must be so challenging, fantastic, but also horrible. Why I said it would be horrible because I just assume that some of my friends seems so a bit fanatic and still consider it as a sensitive thing.

After the class finished, I ask myself some question like “do I think its sensitive thing? Am I kind of fanatic? “. Those questions haunt me to keep searching about the answer.

Finally, I think that I don’t consider it as the sensitive thing so that it means I am not also the fanatic. I am going to explain some evidences that will prove my answers. I live in really democratic family, it means that my father always teach me to respect each other. No matter their background, rich or poor, their ethnic or religion. My father also said that do not judge people because of their differences, because God have made it so colorful so that we can get know each other. It really sticks on my head until now. 

I have some experiences when we have to accept others differences. I had studied in one of Catholic junior high school in Jakarta. Here, I really learned how others (which are Catholic, Christian, also Buddhist) really respected at us who became minority in that school. And when I was here, as SSE scholar, I have really precious memory here. Almost a half of SSE scholars is from other region (not jakartanese) and also has different religion. Here I really adapted and tried to respect others.  Not only because of the religion, also the culture etc. One more thing, when we did “do’a bersama untuk Almh Bu Gum” became the greatest spiritual thing that I have done.

The last, I wish I could be someone who will not judge or stereotype others. Try to accept, understand, and respect others. Be better Gona! :)